Religion & The Order of Nature: The 1994 Cadbury Lectures at the University of Birmingham

Seyyed Hossein Nasr

Abstract

The current ecological crisis is a matter of urgent global concern, with solutions being sought on many fronts. This book argues that the devastation of our world has been exacerbated, if not actually caused, by the reductionist view of nature that has been advanced by modern secular science. What is needed, the book states, is the recovery of the truth to which the great, enduring religions all attest; namely, that nature is sacred. The book traces the historical process through which Western civilization moved away from the idea of nature as sacred and embraced a world view which sees humans ... More

The current ecological crisis is a matter of urgent global concern, with solutions being sought on many fronts. This book argues that the devastation of our world has been exacerbated, if not actually caused, by the reductionist view of nature that has been advanced by modern secular science. What is needed, the book states, is the recovery of the truth to which the great, enduring religions all attest; namely, that nature is sacred. The book traces the historical process through which Western civilization moved away from the idea of nature as sacred and embraced a world view which sees humans as alienated from nature and nature itself as a machine to be dominated and manipulated by humans. The book's goal is to negate the totalitarian claims of modern science and to re-open the way to the religious view of the order of nature, developed over centuries in the cosmologies and sacred sciences of the great traditions. Each tradition, the book shows, has a wealth of knowledge and experience concerning the order of nature. The resuscitation of this knowledge, it argues, would allow religions all over the globe to enrich each other and co-operate to heal the wounds inflicted upon the Earth.

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